Intertextuality in Movies

When you watch the latest movie in the cinema, an episode of a popular TV show or a music video by the most famous singer, there will be a moment you’d go, “This looks familiar to me” or sometimes even “Wow, what a cool Easter egg!” Yes, that is a fun reference by the people behind these ideas but actually, it is not. Intertextuality, in simpler terms, is an interrelationship between a text, sound and/or images taken as basic to an interpretation of the source. It is not copying from another source per se, but it is more towards inspiration or reference that everyone will be familiar with.

            For this example, I went for one of my favourite movies called “Monster High: Why Do Ghouls Fall in Love?” and it contains several intertextualities but these are the most recognisable ones. During the opening credits, it shows a scene where Lagoona Blue daydreams about having a romantic dinner date with her boyfriend, Gil Webber. Instantly, viewers can recognise it as the well-known spaghetti kiss from Disney’s classic movie, the Lady and the Tramp. The next scene shows Ghoulia Yelps’ having a problem on who to choose to be her date as numbers and math formulas circles around her. To some people, they may say that it’s that Confused Math Lady meme, but actually, it is referring more towards a scene from the movie, Hangover, where Alan was counting the cards while he was playing Black Jack and formulas are flying around his head as well. Finally, another recognisable Easter egg is when the antagonist, Kieran Valentine, holds out a boombox that is playing music in the middle of the school corridor as a strategy to woo Draculaura. This scene refers to the iconic boombox scene from the coming of age movie, Say Anything where Lloyd did a similar move in the movie for his love interest, Diane.

Ideology in Skechers Ad

The word “ideology” seems to be familiar to most people but may only get half of the idea what it means. Generally, it acts as a familiar model of how the world “is supposed to be”, somewhat like stereotype. But in this case, the ideology in the Skechers Footwear advertisement above is social ideology, more specifically, family.

            Besides the use of a celebrity endorsement, Brooke Burke, the ad uses her and her family to help to attract more customers to focus more on this ad. Their presence helps to support the headline, “Nothing compares to family” where the ad suggests that purchasing their products for the family will help strengthens the family bond and bring them closer. When it comes to family, no one is more worried about being a real one than parents as they want to be part of their children’s lives and to make sure they have a strong relationship as well. With this ad as well as the presence of the celebrity and their family, it will tell them they’re a perfect happy family thanks to the help of Skechers Footwear. By using the social ideology in the advertisement, it may persuade the parents of a family who comes across the ad into purchasing the products for not only themselves but for the rest of their family too. Guarantee that Skechers will earn more profit because of it.

Genre Analysis

Earlier this week, Segi University held a conference called the International Conference on Industry 4.0, officiated by our prime minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. It started on 14 October and ended on 16 October with several sessions that introduced the fourth industrial revolution to academics and industrial communities of Malaysia. Among the sessions, I attended one of them held by an international professor that talked about the Industry 4.0 and Artificial Intelligence.

            Under genre, there are three main concepts and I’d like to first discuss the “What” of the concept which is the communicative event. It is easy to deduce that the “material” presented in the event is the talk itself and the slideshow presented that day. The slideshow is well prepared with extensive notes about the industry and how it’s done with videos included and ended with a quote from a familiar comedian that nearly made laugh in a professional environment. 

            For the second theory, communicative purpose, the “Why” concept of genre, is to introduce and inform us about the next industrial revolution as well as the AI used in it. He started his presentation by stating what is the fourth industrial revolution where it is said to greatly improve businesses with the assistance of technology and Artificial Intelligence. Later in the session as well, he brought up the about AI as there are several disbeliefs. 

            Lastly, the “Who” of the concept in genre which is discourse communities are the stockholders, engineers, academics and even the students that attended the university. The program was open to everyone interested to learn to attend but it is more targeted towards the people under the business and technology society.